Elie Wiesel
The Perils of Indifference
Delivered 12 April 1999, Washington, D.C.
We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this
vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be
judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have
cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless
chain of assassinations (Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin),
bloodbaths in Cambodia and Algeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and
Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima.
And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence; so much
indifference.
What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and
unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime
and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil. What are its courses and
inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference
conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to
practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine,
as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?
Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to
look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work,
our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another
person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of
no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible
anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.
Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a
beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it
benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels
forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope
is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.